Trudy Myers's Blog, page 31
April 20, 2018
Be Cool, Star
Unfortunately, I only have 1 reference article for this week’s blog, and it was listed as ‘Opinion’. So, if you don’t already, take this week’s blog with 2-3 grains of salt. I did try to follow the link to the original article in the Astronomical Journal, but I’m not subscribed to it, so couldn’t get past their first page. From the looks of some of the titles listed for their current issue, their articles are seriously geeky, which is why I sometimes have to rely on someone else to explain it to me. Having said all that, hand me an ice cube for my drink, and let’s get started.NASA’s Spitzer space telescope (launched in 2003) has found 14 of the coldest stars known, but it’s expected that far more are waiting to be discovered. These 14 objects are hundreds of light-years away and are thought to have temperatures 350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s bitterly cold for stars.These are ‘failed stars’, also known as brown dwarfs, which have been known to exist for years. Spitzer and its sister, WISE, could recognize them by the hundreds before too long. Spitzer was assigned specific patches of space to study, but WISE has been tasked with studying the entire sky. WISE’s task is 40 times the size of Spitzer’s.Brown dwarfs form like any other star, out of collapsing balls of gas and dust. But they are puny things, and never collect enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and start shining. The smallest known so far are 5 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and there are giant gas planets of that mass around other stars. Without nuclear fusion, what little internal heat these bodies started with eventually faded away.It’s possible that WISE could find an object about Neptune-sized (or bigger) in the far reaches of our solar system. Raise your hand if you’ve heard the story of Planet X, a large planet so far out we can’t see it, but it has some disruptive tendencies for the orbits of the outer planets, dwarf planets and other objects we know of. Some scientists speculate it might even be a brown dwarf companion to our sun.So are these 14 examples of planets or stars? Well, they’re hot for one, and unbelievably cold for the other. I assume someone will decide what they are, eventually.
www.networkworld.com/article/2231137/...
March 28, 2018
Where is Calukmul?
The original paragraph I saw about Calakmul consisted of 39 words, but something caught my attention. Usually, I might find 3 or 4 articles on the subject, each 1-2 pages long, and each repeating (or possibly contradicting) information in the other articles.
Calukmul’s different. The wikipedia article must be over 20 pages, and I don’t rely solely on wikipedia. So, let’s start, keeping in mind that I may have to boil things down drastically.
Calakmul (AKA Kalakmul) was a large and powerful Mayan city in what is now the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the Yucatan greater Peten Basin, 35 km (22 miles) from the Guatemalan border. During the Classic Period, Calakmul administered a large domain known as the Kingdom of the Snake. This region was marked by the emblem glyph of the snake head, read as ‘Kaan’. It is believed that the city existed from 550 BC to 900 AD. It held ‘powerhouse’ status from 500 AD to 800 AD.
Some of the major buildings can be traced back to at least 350 AD, with a 40-foot tall monument built sometime between 400 and 200 BC. This city’s long life gave plenty of time to create huge structures, following the Maya tradition of enlarging existing buildings by adding new layers and extending the lower floors. The earliest dated inscription found there is from 431 AD.
During the height of Calukmul’s existance, the city is believed to have had a population of 50,000, and 6,750 structures have been found there. Structure 2, their great pyramid, is the largest structure, standing over 45 m (148 ft), and contains 4 tombs. As explained in the previous paragraph, in MesoAmerica, the pyramid was increased in size by building upon the existing temple. Calakmul’s central monumental architecture covers about 2 sq km (0.77 sq miles), and the entire city - mostly covered with dense residential structures - is 20 sq km (7.7 sq miles).
Calukmul was linked to allied cities by causeway. It sits on a rise some 115 ft above and east of a large seasonal swamp, which was an important source of water. This seasonal swamp was linked to a sophisticated water-control system that encircled an 8.5 square mile area, considered the inner city. The swamp also provided fertile soil along its edge and access to abundant flint nodules. The rise was a limestone dome which the Maya had leveled. Homes began along the edge of the swamp, but during the Classic period, they were also built on high ground and small islands in the swamp.
But the swamp was not the only source of water, for Calakmul had an extensive system of at least 13 reservoirs, including the largest one found in the Maya world. Together, these held enough water to serve 50,000 to 100,000 people. There’s no sign that these reservoirs were used to irrigate crops, which were apparently dependant on the seasonal swamp, as mentioned before.
From 1 to 1000 AD, this area received regular rainfall, which would have made it fairly easy to support the city’s population of 50,000. Growing up in small towns, this sounds huge to me. But I also spent a large portion of my adult life living in Kansas City and Omaha, either one of which would dwarf Calukmul. When you look at the entire Snake kingdom, there were also 20 secondary cities, tertiary and quaternary sites, and rural areas. The total population of this 5,000 sq mile kingdom is estimated to have reached 1.75 million during the late Classic period. However, during the Terminal Class period, Calukmul’s population dramatically declined, and the rural population plummeted.
Throughout the Classic Period, Calukmul had an intense rivalry with the city of Tikal, which lay 100 km (62 miles) southeast. At one point, Calukmul and its allies defeated Tikal, but 150 years later, Tikal rose up anew, and ultimately, Calukmul not only lost its powerhouse status, but ceased to exist at all. Calukmul’s recorded history ends abruptly in 909 AD, about 200 years after Tikal defeated its king and sapped its power.
The great rivalry between Calukmul and Tikel could have been more than trying to prove which city could grab the most resources. Tikel was a powerful city before Calukmul. Tikal was strongly influenced by the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan, and its rulers were male only. Calukmul, on the other hand, seems derived from the city of El Mirador, and both a king and queen often ruled together. However, for whatever reason, when I came across a (partial) list of Calukmul rulers, it assumed all the names were kings, with no explanation of why no queens’ names were included.
The long abandoned Calukmul was rediscovered by air on December 29, 1931. Its current name is Mayan for ‘two adjacent pyramids’. In ancient times, it was Ox Te’ Tuun, which means ‘Three Stones.’ It was visited in 1932-1938, and a map was begun of the city, but work then ceased until 1982-1994. It is now a UNESCO site, contained within a UNESCO biodiversity reserve, and is the subject of a large-scale project of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Unfortunately, the city was built with a soft limestone, so it is suffering from severe erosion, and many of the earlier inscriptions cannot be made out.
I’m very taken by this information, which was fairly uniform over all 3 articles I chose. In fact, after reading the Wikipedia article, the other 2 I chose were... monotonously uniform with it, although not nearly as heavy with intimate history of battles and the names of warring kings. But given these facts as I’ve gathered them, I can almost picture Calukmul, from start to finish, but particularly during its hey-day. Of course, that doesn’t mean it actually looked like anything I’ve dreamt up, but it’s more than what I’ve gotten from the few Maya ruins I’ve actually visited. What about you? Do you see anything more here than armies at war?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calakmu...
February 7, 2018
Cold and Salty
When you and I think of someplace nice to live, we probably aren’t thinking “really cold and super salty”. And yet, there are organisms that do.After 18 months of gathering cold salty water from remote lakes located in Antarctica - including during the extreme winter - scientists discovered... microbes! One location was Deep Lake, whose water is so salty, it remains unfrozen down to -20°.At least one strain of microbes contained plasmids, which are small molecules of DNA which can replicate independently in a host cell and often contain useful genes. A plasmid can also grab a piece of DNA from the host cell and incorporate it in itself. They’re certainly complicated, for being so tiny.Viruses have a protective protein coat that helps them invade unsuspecting cells. Once inside, the virus forces the cell to replicate virus DNA and package it into protein shells, which are pushed out of the ‘nest’ to find their own host cell and repeat the process. Most viruses damage the host cell.One particular plasmid - called pR1SE - is so much like a virus, the scientists weren’t sure how to classify it. Before this Antarctica discovery, plasmids were known to move from cell to cell when 2 cells were touching, or they wandered around as a piece of naked DNA. However, pR1SE must have thought it too cold in Antarctica to wander around naked, so it had developed a coating of proteins that could attach to a cell wall. Once attached, the protein coat would produce buds (called vesicles), and those buds broke off, taking bits of plasmid DNA to do the same with other cells of the same species.Virus? Plasmid? This pR1SE version seemed to be something in between. In fact, having discovered this mechanism, scientists are wondering if possibly viruses are ‘more advanced’ versions of plasmids.Another microbe found in those hypersaline lakes is a ‘cannibal virus’, or virophage, the 3rd virophage ever discovered. This type of virus only infects cells that are already infected with a ‘regular’ virus. As the regular virus uses the cell’s mechanisms to reproduce copies of itself, the virophage inserts its genome into the virus, thus getting the virus to reproduce virophageDNA. The number of copies of the regular virus is greatly reduced, so damage is reduced.There’s plenty of tiny life in them there super-cold, super-frigid lakes, from things that hardly seem like life (regular plasmids), to something slightly more advanced (pR1SE), through another advancement (viruses) and right to something (virophage) that can try to limit the damage done by the prior version (viruses). Who could have guessed that life in Antarctica would be so complicated?So, let’s take a lesson from this. Life is complicated. If you are creating a new planet or even just a new continent, try to make the life cycle complicated. I have problems with a planet of sand that produces butterflies and giant worms, and that’s all. If the giant worms only have butterflies to eat, how do they get so big? And what do the butterflies eat?
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-antarct...
January 25, 2018
Ancient Massacre
Why do humans go to war? It has long been believed that warfare began once early humans abandoned the carefree lifestyle of hunting and gathering in favor of building a home, farming, and establishing villages. People in the next village or the next valley, it was theorized, grew envious of their neighbor’s ‘luxury’, and decided to take it from them.A single archaeological dig in Kenya may up-end that theory.The dig site is Nataruk, which is currently dry scrub brush territory some distance from the southwest shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Human skeletons found at the Nataruk site have been dated to about 10,000 years ago, when Lake Turkana was much larger and the area of the site would have been fertile, perhaps even a marshland. Lots of animals would have used this area to drink, so hunting and gathering would have provided plenty.What was found at Nataruk are the remains of 27 people, which included 12 skeletons that were relatively complete. When alive, they ranged in age from Old (back then, that meant over 45) to the very young, including one who either had not yet been born, or was an infant being held by one of the women. The archeological team who discovered them believe they died violently or were left to die, and were left unburied. They point to blunt-force trauma to some of the skulls, arrowheads and spear points found embedded in other skeletons, various other broken bones, and indications that some had their hands tied together. Other archeologists debate that these skeletal injuries might have happened after the people were dead.These 27 people - who all appear to have died at the same time - included 8 men, 8 women and 6 children, with 5 others whose age and gender could not be determined.Part of the reason why warfare has been assumed to have started after people settled into villages was because - before this - evidence of violence between nomadic groups has been sparse and hard to identify. Researchers mention the Jebel Sahaba graveyard (located in modern Sudan), which is dated to 13,000 years ago and contains the remains of some people obviously killed in violent skirmishes. That this is a cemetery indicates a settled community.But, my mind says, the entire global population did not start farming and settling into villages at the same time. If food from plants, hunting and fishing were enough to sustain your tribe, and all you had to do was move a few miles every so often, why bother settling down? (Especially if you’ve never heard of such a thing.) Or maybe Nataruk was somewhat more of a settlement than a temporary camp, because the hunting, fishing and gathering was so good.Whichever way it was, there might have been several ‘nomadic’ groups in the general area. Perhaps some were greedier than others. Or perhaps good eating led to more mouths to feed, and then the climate ‘shifted’ (the wetter late Pleistocene era slid into the drier early Holocene). It wouldn’t take much for the hunting, fishing and gathering to become less bountiful.I’m not sure I believe that warfare came along only when people settled down, grew crops and started communities. They have found plenty of evidence of violence between nomadic individuals, so I’m not sure why they think warfare (between groups instead of individuals) wouldn’t have happened. They say the earliest group skirmishes happened because one group wanted something the other group had. Why would it be any different if neither group was settled? If a group of nomads were moving, desperately looking for food, and they stumbled across another group’s campfire while they were roasting a few nuts and cutting up a couple rabbits, why would the first group NOT want what the 2nd group had?It’s something to remember if you are writing about other times and other cultures. We probably have to start by looking humans and their reactions to various circumstances, but I can’t imagine if 2 groups of nomads ran into each other, and neither had enough food to feel their own group, that they’d be very friendly with each other. If you want your alien species to always be friendly, no matter what the circumstances, you’d better figure out how that worked during their prehistory days. Why would sharing resources that really wouldn’t have been enough for 1 group be of benefit to them?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataruk
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataruk
December 30, 2017
Dealing With Characters
If you read my other blog (MacOnFireball.blogspot.com), you may have seen my facebook post a couple weeks ago that I couldn’t post that week’s episode because Bugalu was being a jerk, and I had to do a major rewrite. As I did the rewrite, Mac was hostile and everybody started explaining everything! (As you know, Bob, Earth’s moon orbits around Earth, and it takes about 28 days to do it.) The only thing worse than an info dump is a
completely unnecessary
info dump!
I used to say that I start with a character, and they tell me their story. Well, kinda sorta. Sometimes, I start with a scene (a battleground after the battle) or an experience (being tossed off a cliff like a piece of garbage). Then I start wondering, “Who would be in this situation? How did they get here? Or, if it’s more interesting, what will they do now?”
No matter how tight-lipped a character starts out, by the time I’ve written 3-4 thousand words about him/her, they have layers of likes, dislikes, memories, experiences, hang-ups and maybe even dreams. They are no longer 2-dimensional (an apprentice wizard), they are developing some depth (Her teacher has gotten frail during her apprenticeship, so she feels she should stay and take care of him).
I get to know my characters pretty well. You’d think that would be a good thing, but... it has its drawbacks.
When they start telling me their story, they might not give all the details. We don’t know each other very well, and they don’t think their life is that interesting, usually, so I can’t blame them for editing what they give me. And I don’t usually question much while I’m getting the rough draft down. But when I start going through the next draft, I start asking for details.
“Smitty, I’m not sure I understand. Mac just came on board, and you’re already out of sorts with her. Did she do something to irritate you?”
“She stared at me from the moment her transpod opened!”
That hadn’t been mentioned before. Obviously, that scene needed expanding so the reader would know he was not - normally - an old sour-puss.
“He’s passed over plenty of hopeful subordinates who would say he is.”
“He decided they wouldn’t fit his team. Part of being an officer. Hold your peace, Drake. She’s talking to Smitty.”
Okay. Maybe I should say here that I’ve been working on Mac’s adventures on the Fireball for about 40 years. That’s a long time to have the same people living in your head. Yes, we’ve taken breaks - some of them pretty long - and they’ve had to share my head with plenty of other characters during those decades. But I think it’s safe to say that I REALLY know Mac, and the rest of the crew.
How well do you know your siblings or spouse? If you’re having a bad day, do they know it? Or do you still hide that away?
When I confronted Bugalu about being a jerk in the soon-to-be-posted episode, he responded with, “I was trying to make Mac get her temper under control. It’s not like I haven’t talked to her about that before.”
Sure enough, Mac was verging on a rampage, until Bugalu had shocked her by being a jerk. I put on my ‘director’/counselor hats, and we worked to get their moods more... settled in the story.
Oh, and the un-necessary explaining? It happens from time to time, mostly in a rough draft. I just pull my editor hat on tight and remove the unnecessary bits. In this case, 2 pages of ‘splainin’ became 6 lines. 5.5 lines. Somewhere in there.
I don’t want my characters to edit their story. That’s part of my job.
Fighting between characters? Maybe, because siblings fight. Spouses fight. After 40 years, you have to expect an occasional disagreement. But if it becomes part of the story, it needs a reason. Something other than, “I was having a bad day.”
I used to say that I start with a character, and they tell me their story. Well, kinda sorta. Sometimes, I start with a scene (a battleground after the battle) or an experience (being tossed off a cliff like a piece of garbage). Then I start wondering, “Who would be in this situation? How did they get here? Or, if it’s more interesting, what will they do now?”
No matter how tight-lipped a character starts out, by the time I’ve written 3-4 thousand words about him/her, they have layers of likes, dislikes, memories, experiences, hang-ups and maybe even dreams. They are no longer 2-dimensional (an apprentice wizard), they are developing some depth (Her teacher has gotten frail during her apprenticeship, so she feels she should stay and take care of him).
I get to know my characters pretty well. You’d think that would be a good thing, but... it has its drawbacks.
When they start telling me their story, they might not give all the details. We don’t know each other very well, and they don’t think their life is that interesting, usually, so I can’t blame them for editing what they give me. And I don’t usually question much while I’m getting the rough draft down. But when I start going through the next draft, I start asking for details.
“Smitty, I’m not sure I understand. Mac just came on board, and you’re already out of sorts with her. Did she do something to irritate you?”
“She stared at me from the moment her transpod opened!”
That hadn’t been mentioned before. Obviously, that scene needed expanding so the reader would know he was not - normally - an old sour-puss.
“He’s passed over plenty of hopeful subordinates who would say he is.”
“He decided they wouldn’t fit his team. Part of being an officer. Hold your peace, Drake. She’s talking to Smitty.”
Okay. Maybe I should say here that I’ve been working on Mac’s adventures on the Fireball for about 40 years. That’s a long time to have the same people living in your head. Yes, we’ve taken breaks - some of them pretty long - and they’ve had to share my head with plenty of other characters during those decades. But I think it’s safe to say that I REALLY know Mac, and the rest of the crew.
How well do you know your siblings or spouse? If you’re having a bad day, do they know it? Or do you still hide that away?
When I confronted Bugalu about being a jerk in the soon-to-be-posted episode, he responded with, “I was trying to make Mac get her temper under control. It’s not like I haven’t talked to her about that before.”
Sure enough, Mac was verging on a rampage, until Bugalu had shocked her by being a jerk. I put on my ‘director’/counselor hats, and we worked to get their moods more... settled in the story.
Oh, and the un-necessary explaining? It happens from time to time, mostly in a rough draft. I just pull my editor hat on tight and remove the unnecessary bits. In this case, 2 pages of ‘splainin’ became 6 lines. 5.5 lines. Somewhere in there.
I don’t want my characters to edit their story. That’s part of my job.
Fighting between characters? Maybe, because siblings fight. Spouses fight. After 40 years, you have to expect an occasional disagreement. But if it becomes part of the story, it needs a reason. Something other than, “I was having a bad day.”
December 15, 2017
Weird Planets 12
Good morning! This is the 12th day of your tour, and it’s the last day! So tomorrow you can either rest up or start home, it’s your choice. Now, we do have a number of planets to get through today, so everybody buckle up and let’s get going!
The first one is 51 Pegasi b. Now, don’t ask about the name; they only gave us clues about one naming method, and have completely ignored any other methods that may have been used. Anyway, 51 Pegasi b is gigantic, about half the mass of Jupiter. Yet it completes its orbit in 4 days, so it’s tucked right in close, like so many seem to be. This was the first confirmed exo-planet orbiting a sun-like star, and that’s its claim to fame.
Here is system HR 8799. We aren’t here to see any one planet in this system, but the entire system. This was the first exoplanet system that was directly imaged. As you can see, the system contains a debris disk and 4 massive planets, at least.
Now this - and I keep asking for the name, but they never give it to me - was once called the Oldest Alien Planet. It is 12.7 billion years old, so it formed more than 8 billion years before Earth and only 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Its discovery made people start thinking that planets are very common in the universe and that life may have begun far sooner than anybody had ever imagined. I’m still waiting to hear from one of those civilizations that got started so much earlier than us.
Here we are, only 420 light-years away from Earth, at the Coku Tau-4 system. See the big dusty disk going around the star? Scientists think this system has the universe’s youngest star, less than 1 million years old. They haven’t actually found it yet, but if you look closely, you can see a big hole in that disk. That hole is 10 times the size of Earth’s orbit around the sun, and they surmise it’s been made by this planet cleaning up the dust as it rolls around its orbit.
This is Hat-P-1. Huge, isn’t it? It is 1.76 times bigger than Jupiter, but only has 1/2 Jupiter’s mass. It’s lighter than a ball of cork would be! What’s holding it together? I have no idea. Known as one of the Puffiest Planets known, it could float in water, if it could find a tub big enough.
This Super-Neptune, called Hat-P-11b, is 4.7 times the size of Earth, but has 25 times Earth’s mass. If you weighed 100 pounds on Earth, here you’d weigh 2,500 pounds. Doesn’t sound very inviting to me. And it’s puny star is 3/4 the size of our sun, and cooler. On the other hand, 11b’s orbit is so close to that star, it only takes 4.88 days to complete an orbit, and the surface temperature is around 1100°F. Nope, still doesn’t sound inviting.
Now here’s a fun one. Most planets orbit in the same plane as their star’s equator. But XO-3b’s orbit is at a 37-degree angle to the star’s equator. How did that happen? The only other planet that’s been known to have such a tilted orbit was Pluto. But it got demoted to dwarf planet, and its eccentricities are of no interest anymore. So tilted orbits are an oddity. I’ve heard a rumor that one planet orbits backwards to its star’s rotation. But I don’t know where it is, or else we’d squeeze that in today, too.
Okay, watch carefully, or you’re going to miss this planet. SWEEPS-10 is only 740,000 miles from its parent star. It zips around so fast, a SWEEPS-10 year is only 10 hours long. This puts it in a classification called Ultra Short Period Planets. Those are the fastest planets, where their orbits last less than a day.
Take a good look, this is the last planet of the day, and of our tour. COROT-exo-3b is the densest exoplanet known to man at this time. As you can see, it’s about the same size as Jupiter, but it’s mass is 20 times Jupiter’s. That makes it about twice as dense as lead. But it might not even be a planet. Scientists are also considering the possibility that it’s a brown dwarf, or failed star.
Please watch your step as you disembark. Thank you for taking our tour, and for sticking with it for the entire 12 legs. I know the tour is called ‘Weird Planets’, but actually, this was only a sampling. If we had tried to show you all the weird planets out there, we could be at it for years. Have safe journeys home!
[At last! I don’t know what I’ll be doing next week, but it willprobably have nothing to do with planets, weird or not!]
https://www.nasa/gove/feature/jpl/20-...
The first one is 51 Pegasi b. Now, don’t ask about the name; they only gave us clues about one naming method, and have completely ignored any other methods that may have been used. Anyway, 51 Pegasi b is gigantic, about half the mass of Jupiter. Yet it completes its orbit in 4 days, so it’s tucked right in close, like so many seem to be. This was the first confirmed exo-planet orbiting a sun-like star, and that’s its claim to fame.
Here is system HR 8799. We aren’t here to see any one planet in this system, but the entire system. This was the first exoplanet system that was directly imaged. As you can see, the system contains a debris disk and 4 massive planets, at least.
Now this - and I keep asking for the name, but they never give it to me - was once called the Oldest Alien Planet. It is 12.7 billion years old, so it formed more than 8 billion years before Earth and only 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Its discovery made people start thinking that planets are very common in the universe and that life may have begun far sooner than anybody had ever imagined. I’m still waiting to hear from one of those civilizations that got started so much earlier than us.
Here we are, only 420 light-years away from Earth, at the Coku Tau-4 system. See the big dusty disk going around the star? Scientists think this system has the universe’s youngest star, less than 1 million years old. They haven’t actually found it yet, but if you look closely, you can see a big hole in that disk. That hole is 10 times the size of Earth’s orbit around the sun, and they surmise it’s been made by this planet cleaning up the dust as it rolls around its orbit.
This is Hat-P-1. Huge, isn’t it? It is 1.76 times bigger than Jupiter, but only has 1/2 Jupiter’s mass. It’s lighter than a ball of cork would be! What’s holding it together? I have no idea. Known as one of the Puffiest Planets known, it could float in water, if it could find a tub big enough.
This Super-Neptune, called Hat-P-11b, is 4.7 times the size of Earth, but has 25 times Earth’s mass. If you weighed 100 pounds on Earth, here you’d weigh 2,500 pounds. Doesn’t sound very inviting to me. And it’s puny star is 3/4 the size of our sun, and cooler. On the other hand, 11b’s orbit is so close to that star, it only takes 4.88 days to complete an orbit, and the surface temperature is around 1100°F. Nope, still doesn’t sound inviting.
Now here’s a fun one. Most planets orbit in the same plane as their star’s equator. But XO-3b’s orbit is at a 37-degree angle to the star’s equator. How did that happen? The only other planet that’s been known to have such a tilted orbit was Pluto. But it got demoted to dwarf planet, and its eccentricities are of no interest anymore. So tilted orbits are an oddity. I’ve heard a rumor that one planet orbits backwards to its star’s rotation. But I don’t know where it is, or else we’d squeeze that in today, too.
Okay, watch carefully, or you’re going to miss this planet. SWEEPS-10 is only 740,000 miles from its parent star. It zips around so fast, a SWEEPS-10 year is only 10 hours long. This puts it in a classification called Ultra Short Period Planets. Those are the fastest planets, where their orbits last less than a day.
Take a good look, this is the last planet of the day, and of our tour. COROT-exo-3b is the densest exoplanet known to man at this time. As you can see, it’s about the same size as Jupiter, but it’s mass is 20 times Jupiter’s. That makes it about twice as dense as lead. But it might not even be a planet. Scientists are also considering the possibility that it’s a brown dwarf, or failed star.
Please watch your step as you disembark. Thank you for taking our tour, and for sticking with it for the entire 12 legs. I know the tour is called ‘Weird Planets’, but actually, this was only a sampling. If we had tried to show you all the weird planets out there, we could be at it for years. Have safe journeys home!
[At last! I don’t know what I’ll be doing next week, but it will
https://www.nasa/gove/feature/jpl/20-...
December 6, 2017
Weird Planets 11
Good Morning! Today we'll be visiting some of the Gliese discoveries, and then... well, we'll see if we have the time to visit anything else.
Our first visit is to Gliese 436b, which orbits that faint red dwarf you can probably see in the distance. Gliese 436b is about the size of Neptune, but has a small rocky core, surrounded by ice that makes up the majority of its size. And then 436b has a huge hydrogen cloud surrounding it, a cloud that is approximately 50 times the size of 436b proper. Like a comet, 436b exudes a 'tail' of this hydrogen as it orbits its sun. And finally, despite its icy exterior, this planet has an average temperature around 439 ⁰C. Some people call this the 'burning ice planet'.
Here is Gliese 581c, which made headlines when its discovery was announced in 2007. This is a super-Earth, with a mass 5 times that of our own. So if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, here you would weigh 500 pounds. Even so, this was one of the first to be announced as a potentially hospitable planet. However, further study revealed that it was 'tidally locked', meaning that one side always faces its parent star. That side would be blistering hot, and the opposite side unbelievably cold. The only possible location that might offer acceptable temperatures would be the 'twilight zone' between day and night, which I'm thinking would possibly experience a lot of wind. So, a fairly thin band of livable area with a lot of wind, and you weigh 5 times what you should. Surely we could find a better place to colonize?
Gliese 581e is in the same system. 581E used to hold the title as the smallest alien planet, but in January 2011, the announcement of Kepler 10b meant 581e lost that title.
Okay, we do have time for a couple more, so let's look at the WASP planets!
WASP 17bis the first planet discovered that orbits in the opposite direction as its host star's rotation. It also currently has the title of 'Most Puffy'. This is because it is the 2nd largest planet currently known, but its mass is half of Jupiter's. Sounds like a big ball of gas, right?
That brings us to our final system for the day, WASP 47. This is a compact multi-planet system, the only one known to hold a 'hot Jupiter' with close companions.
Now, sit back and relax. We'll be back at the station in a jiffy.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science...
Our first visit is to Gliese 436b, which orbits that faint red dwarf you can probably see in the distance. Gliese 436b is about the size of Neptune, but has a small rocky core, surrounded by ice that makes up the majority of its size. And then 436b has a huge hydrogen cloud surrounding it, a cloud that is approximately 50 times the size of 436b proper. Like a comet, 436b exudes a 'tail' of this hydrogen as it orbits its sun. And finally, despite its icy exterior, this planet has an average temperature around 439 ⁰C. Some people call this the 'burning ice planet'.
Here is Gliese 581c, which made headlines when its discovery was announced in 2007. This is a super-Earth, with a mass 5 times that of our own. So if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, here you would weigh 500 pounds. Even so, this was one of the first to be announced as a potentially hospitable planet. However, further study revealed that it was 'tidally locked', meaning that one side always faces its parent star. That side would be blistering hot, and the opposite side unbelievably cold. The only possible location that might offer acceptable temperatures would be the 'twilight zone' between day and night, which I'm thinking would possibly experience a lot of wind. So, a fairly thin band of livable area with a lot of wind, and you weigh 5 times what you should. Surely we could find a better place to colonize?
Gliese 581e is in the same system. 581E used to hold the title as the smallest alien planet, but in January 2011, the announcement of Kepler 10b meant 581e lost that title.
Okay, we do have time for a couple more, so let's look at the WASP planets!
WASP 17bis the first planet discovered that orbits in the opposite direction as its host star's rotation. It also currently has the title of 'Most Puffy'. This is because it is the 2nd largest planet currently known, but its mass is half of Jupiter's. Sounds like a big ball of gas, right?
That brings us to our final system for the day, WASP 47. This is a compact multi-planet system, the only one known to hold a 'hot Jupiter' with close companions.
Now, sit back and relax. We'll be back at the station in a jiffy.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science...
November 16, 2017
Weird Planets 10
Good morning! Congratulations on completing the first 9 installments of your tour. We don’t have as many worlds to visit as yesterday, so there will be ample time to relax. If you want a pillow or beverage, press the blue button on your arm rest, and either CXQ-9 or CXQ-10 will tend to you. Now, if everybody is comfortable, we’ll get started.
Excuse me. I’m sorry to disturb you, but we are entering the system of today’s first planet. If you turn your attention to your viewers, currently on their maximum magnification, you’ll see a small deep-pink blob. This is GJ-504b, the Pink Planet, 57.3 light years from Earth. The dark pink glow of GJ-504b is caused by the remaining heat of its formation. It’s about the same size as Jupiter, but it’s further from its sun than Neptune is from ours. Scientists didn’t think such a large planet could form at that distance because there wouldn’t be enough dust and debris. Your viewers will adjust their magnification as we approach and swing past, so you can get a good look.
Your attention, please. We are now 434 light-years from Earth, approaching planet J1407B, which is described as a ‘Super-Saturn’. It has a mass of 40 Jupiters and 37 rings surround it, spanning 120 million kilometres. That’s about 200 times the size of Saturn’s rings. Some scientists think these rings may be in the process of forming moons, which has them quite excited, since they’ve never seen that happen outside of our solar system. Actually, even within our system, we haven’t seen it happen.
CXQ-9 and -10 will serve brunch as we move on, complete with champagne! Enjoy!
Good afternoon! Your viewers are currently showing KOI-314c, the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured. Rather surprisingly, it has the same mass as Earth, but is 60% larger in diameter. If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you will still weigh 100 pounds on KOI-314c. However, the larger diameter seems to indicate a very thick atmosphere. If you look slightly to the left of the planet’s image, you’ll see the red dwarf star that it orbits. This system is about 200 light-years from Earth. Yes, we are already headed back to the tour station.
This is our final viewing for today. This is Epsilon Eridani b, which orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years from Earth. Before long, Earth telescopes may be able to photograph it directly. Unfortunately, it is too far from its star to have liquid water or life as we know it. However, I’m going I’ll make a couple low orbits around it and set your viewers on maximum, and you can all try to spot life as we don’t know it!
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have returned to the tour station. I hope you have enjoyed your day with Star Tours. Er, I mean, Planet Tours.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space...
Excuse me. I’m sorry to disturb you, but we are entering the system of today’s first planet. If you turn your attention to your viewers, currently on their maximum magnification, you’ll see a small deep-pink blob. This is GJ-504b, the Pink Planet, 57.3 light years from Earth. The dark pink glow of GJ-504b is caused by the remaining heat of its formation. It’s about the same size as Jupiter, but it’s further from its sun than Neptune is from ours. Scientists didn’t think such a large planet could form at that distance because there wouldn’t be enough dust and debris. Your viewers will adjust their magnification as we approach and swing past, so you can get a good look.
Your attention, please. We are now 434 light-years from Earth, approaching planet J1407B, which is described as a ‘Super-Saturn’. It has a mass of 40 Jupiters and 37 rings surround it, spanning 120 million kilometres. That’s about 200 times the size of Saturn’s rings. Some scientists think these rings may be in the process of forming moons, which has them quite excited, since they’ve never seen that happen outside of our solar system. Actually, even within our system, we haven’t seen it happen.
CXQ-9 and -10 will serve brunch as we move on, complete with champagne! Enjoy!
Good afternoon! Your viewers are currently showing KOI-314c, the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured. Rather surprisingly, it has the same mass as Earth, but is 60% larger in diameter. If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you will still weigh 100 pounds on KOI-314c. However, the larger diameter seems to indicate a very thick atmosphere. If you look slightly to the left of the planet’s image, you’ll see the red dwarf star that it orbits. This system is about 200 light-years from Earth. Yes, we are already headed back to the tour station.
This is our final viewing for today. This is Epsilon Eridani b, which orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years from Earth. Before long, Earth telescopes may be able to photograph it directly. Unfortunately, it is too far from its star to have liquid water or life as we know it. However, I’m going I’ll make a couple low orbits around it and set your viewers on maximum, and you can all try to spot life as we don’t know it!
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have returned to the tour station. I hope you have enjoyed your day with Star Tours. Er, I mean, Planet Tours.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space...
November 8, 2017
Weird Planets 9
How many are here for Leg 9 of the Weird Planets Tour? All of you? Okay, we’ll get started. Frankly, a lot of people stay in their hotel room for this day. After 8 straight days of viewing planets, they feel they’ve seen all the possibilities. I prefer to think that each planet has something that makes it unique. Everybody secured? Here we go.
Today we’re going to visit planets and systems discovered by the Kepler Telescope, which was the first unit designed and launched specifically to look for xenoplanets. Our first stop is the Kepler-11 system. Take a look; there are at least 5 planets, although sometimes I swear there’s 6. And they’re all packed in real close to their parent star. If this were the Earth system, all of them would be within Mercury’s orbit. And yet, this system is stable; they aren’t playing havoc with each other’s orbits. When this system was first discovered, a lot of scientists revisited the ideas about planet formation. And Kepler-11 also suggested that systems with multiple small planets might be common. It makes the Earth system a little less unique, but ups the possibility that other intelligent beings – or at least life of some kind – will eventually be found.
At about that same time, the Kepler Telescope discovered Kepler-10c, a mega-Earth planet that some called the “Godzilla of Earths”. 10c is 2.3 times the size of Earth, and 17 times heavier. I think that means if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, on 10c you would weigh 1,700 pounds. You couldn’t stand up on 10c. You wouldn’t have enough muscles to do it. Now, 10c has a sibling, Kepler-10b, which is a lava world. We’ll catch a glance of that on our way out. The Kepler-10 system is 570 light years from Earth, and is located in the constellation Draco. Considering the naming practice, there should also be a planet called Kepler-10a. I keep asking about it, but they never add any notes about that planet, if it even exists.
In front of us, you can see a double star. Orbiting around both stars is a circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, which some have nick-named “Tatooine”. You’ve already visited the other so-called “Tatooine”, haven’t you? In a trinary star system? Yes, that earlier 1 only orbits one of the 3 stars, so the chances of any occupants actually seeing 2 suns setting at the same time are pretty slim, but on Kepler-16b, that could be possible.
Our next planet is Kepler-22b. Yes, ma’am, I’m sure there were discoveries between 16 and 22, but they haven’t given me any information on them. They carefully pick which planets to have you view. I’m afraid we couldn’t possibly visit every planet that’s been discovered. At this point, there are thousands of them, and it would take years, even if we managed several in 1 day.
The next planet is Kepler-22b. This planet is in its system’s habitable zone, and could possibly be an actual water world, which we don’t have in Earth’s system.
A short hop away is the Kepler-36 system. Do you see the 2 planets? Just 2, and their orbits are extremely close to each other. At their closest, the distance between them is 1.2 million miles, which is only 5 times the distance between the Earth and her moon. That might make colonizing easier than Earth had in colonizing Mars.
And now we skip all the way to Kepler-186f. Does anything look familiar about this planet? Some people think there is, even if they can’t say what. Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet found in the habitable zone, so the temperature is right for liquid water. It’s also very close in size to Earth. It always makes me want to land and see what might live there. But we have to keep moving, or we’ll never get done.
Here we have the Kepler-444 system, the oldest known planetary system. Here we have no less than 5 terrestrial-sized planets, all in orbital resonance. This group shows that solar systems have formed and existed in our galaxy for nearly its entire life.
Kepler-452b is the first Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. So it might look even more familiar than 186f did. 452b is only 60% larger than Earth, and 5% further from its star. Following our earlier logic, if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, here you would weigh 160 pounds, which would be tiring, but do-able. And if a typical day on Earth got to 100°, here it might get to 95°. But there are a lot of things that have an influence on a planet’s temperature, so I’m not absolutely certain of that last statement. Still, at first glance, it certainly sounds inviting.
And now, just one last pause on our way back to the station. As you may know, the Kepler Telescope developed a technical problem, which scientists ‘fixed’, sort of, but its mission had to be modified to accommodate its somewhat limited capability. At that point, they stopped using ‘Kepler’ in the naming ritual and started using ‘K2’, to indicate these discoveries were made after its mission was modified.
This is the K2-3 system. We’re a bit late getting back, so we won’t stop here long. K2-3 has 3 super-Earths in orbit. If you check today’s pamphlet, the mass and radius of each is listed. The home office keeps promising to include updates on their atmosphere compositions, so if you see that information, I’d appreciate you letting me know.
And here we are. I apologize for a long day, but Leg 9 always takes longer than the home office thinks it should. Have a pleasant evening and get a good night’s sleep.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/20-i...
www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-pla...
Today we’re going to visit planets and systems discovered by the Kepler Telescope, which was the first unit designed and launched specifically to look for xenoplanets. Our first stop is the Kepler-11 system. Take a look; there are at least 5 planets, although sometimes I swear there’s 6. And they’re all packed in real close to their parent star. If this were the Earth system, all of them would be within Mercury’s orbit. And yet, this system is stable; they aren’t playing havoc with each other’s orbits. When this system was first discovered, a lot of scientists revisited the ideas about planet formation. And Kepler-11 also suggested that systems with multiple small planets might be common. It makes the Earth system a little less unique, but ups the possibility that other intelligent beings – or at least life of some kind – will eventually be found.
At about that same time, the Kepler Telescope discovered Kepler-10c, a mega-Earth planet that some called the “Godzilla of Earths”. 10c is 2.3 times the size of Earth, and 17 times heavier. I think that means if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, on 10c you would weigh 1,700 pounds. You couldn’t stand up on 10c. You wouldn’t have enough muscles to do it. Now, 10c has a sibling, Kepler-10b, which is a lava world. We’ll catch a glance of that on our way out. The Kepler-10 system is 570 light years from Earth, and is located in the constellation Draco. Considering the naming practice, there should also be a planet called Kepler-10a. I keep asking about it, but they never add any notes about that planet, if it even exists.
In front of us, you can see a double star. Orbiting around both stars is a circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, which some have nick-named “Tatooine”. You’ve already visited the other so-called “Tatooine”, haven’t you? In a trinary star system? Yes, that earlier 1 only orbits one of the 3 stars, so the chances of any occupants actually seeing 2 suns setting at the same time are pretty slim, but on Kepler-16b, that could be possible.
Our next planet is Kepler-22b. Yes, ma’am, I’m sure there were discoveries between 16 and 22, but they haven’t given me any information on them. They carefully pick which planets to have you view. I’m afraid we couldn’t possibly visit every planet that’s been discovered. At this point, there are thousands of them, and it would take years, even if we managed several in 1 day.
The next planet is Kepler-22b. This planet is in its system’s habitable zone, and could possibly be an actual water world, which we don’t have in Earth’s system.
A short hop away is the Kepler-36 system. Do you see the 2 planets? Just 2, and their orbits are extremely close to each other. At their closest, the distance between them is 1.2 million miles, which is only 5 times the distance between the Earth and her moon. That might make colonizing easier than Earth had in colonizing Mars.
And now we skip all the way to Kepler-186f. Does anything look familiar about this planet? Some people think there is, even if they can’t say what. Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet found in the habitable zone, so the temperature is right for liquid water. It’s also very close in size to Earth. It always makes me want to land and see what might live there. But we have to keep moving, or we’ll never get done.
Here we have the Kepler-444 system, the oldest known planetary system. Here we have no less than 5 terrestrial-sized planets, all in orbital resonance. This group shows that solar systems have formed and existed in our galaxy for nearly its entire life.
Kepler-452b is the first Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. So it might look even more familiar than 186f did. 452b is only 60% larger than Earth, and 5% further from its star. Following our earlier logic, if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, here you would weigh 160 pounds, which would be tiring, but do-able. And if a typical day on Earth got to 100°, here it might get to 95°. But there are a lot of things that have an influence on a planet’s temperature, so I’m not absolutely certain of that last statement. Still, at first glance, it certainly sounds inviting.
And now, just one last pause on our way back to the station. As you may know, the Kepler Telescope developed a technical problem, which scientists ‘fixed’, sort of, but its mission had to be modified to accommodate its somewhat limited capability. At that point, they stopped using ‘Kepler’ in the naming ritual and started using ‘K2’, to indicate these discoveries were made after its mission was modified.
This is the K2-3 system. We’re a bit late getting back, so we won’t stop here long. K2-3 has 3 super-Earths in orbit. If you check today’s pamphlet, the mass and radius of each is listed. The home office keeps promising to include updates on their atmosphere compositions, so if you see that information, I’d appreciate you letting me know.
And here we are. I apologize for a long day, but Leg 9 always takes longer than the home office thinks it should. Have a pleasant evening and get a good night’s sleep.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/20-i...
www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-pla...
October 19, 2017
Weird Planets 8
Good morning. I am your replacement driver and tour guide. Your previous driver, um, has been... has been asked to stay home today.
Hope you had a large breakfast, because we’re going to visit several ‘HD’ systems on this leg, and it could be a long time until supper. Everybody buckled in? If not, get that way, ‘cause we’re headed out.
Okay, on the right side is HD 106906 b. It’s 11 times the size of Jupiter. Yes, it does have a parent star. It’s one of those bright bits of light ahead of us. This planet’s distance from its star is 650 times as Earth’s distance from our sun, so I can’t blame you for asking. Despite being so remote from its star, the average temperature on the surface is 1500° Celsius, which is 2,732° Fahrenheit. That’s pretty toasty warm, in my mind. Scientists say it shouldn’t exist at all, being so large and so far from its parent. Where did it get enough material that far out? But however it came to exist, it’s only 13 Million years old. Just a baby, really, since the universe is over 14 Billionyears. So maybe it just hasn’t had a chance to cool off since it came into being?
Now, right over here is Osiris, more formally known as HD 209458 b, which was the first planet to be seen as it crossed in front of its star. It’s also the first planet to have its light directly detected. Its discovery showed that transit observations were possible, which opened up a whole new realm of exoplanet discovery.
The planet ahead of us is HD 189733 b. It’s about the size of Jupiter, and has been studied quite a bit ever since scientists discovered it transiting its star while they studied that star using X-ray frequencies. This is also one of the first planets to have its atmosphere ‘sniffed’ to determine its composition. I don’t remember the full list, but I do remember that the atmosphere contains methane. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s cows on that planet. Methane can be produced naturally. It doesn’t have to be a biological byproduct.
Now we come to HD 114762 b, which was discovered in 1989. This is the first discovered planet to be orbiting a sun-like star. However, because its mass is - as seems so popular - 11 times that of Jupiter, and because it only takes 84 days to complete an orbit, it was initially thought to be a brown dwarf. But it’s not. As a comparison, tiny little Mercury takes 88 days to complete an orbit around our sun.
I have to ask you to please be quiet as I approach this one. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t even bother with this one. Too dangerous, if you ask me; you never quite know what to expect from HD 80606 b. It’s orbit is so eccentric-- Oh! Hang on! ... Whew! That was close. I think we’ll be safe now, at least for a few minutes. Besides its highly eccentric orbit, HD 80606 b also displays plenty of storms and atmospheric heating, and you can plainly see how fast it rotates.
Okay, that’s our tour for today. I’ll take you back to base so you can get some supper. I know I’m ready for it. No, I’m sorry, I don’t know who will be your next driver and tour guide. No, I don’t know where you’ll be taken, either. From the looks of it, you still have quite a number of planets to visit. We are all qualified drivers and tour guides, ma’am, otherwise, we wouldn’t have the job.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science...
www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-pla...
Hope you had a large breakfast, because we’re going to visit several ‘HD’ systems on this leg, and it could be a long time until supper. Everybody buckled in? If not, get that way, ‘cause we’re headed out.
Okay, on the right side is HD 106906 b. It’s 11 times the size of Jupiter. Yes, it does have a parent star. It’s one of those bright bits of light ahead of us. This planet’s distance from its star is 650 times as Earth’s distance from our sun, so I can’t blame you for asking. Despite being so remote from its star, the average temperature on the surface is 1500° Celsius, which is 2,732° Fahrenheit. That’s pretty toasty warm, in my mind. Scientists say it shouldn’t exist at all, being so large and so far from its parent. Where did it get enough material that far out? But however it came to exist, it’s only 13 Million years old. Just a baby, really, since the universe is over 14 Billionyears. So maybe it just hasn’t had a chance to cool off since it came into being?
Now, right over here is Osiris, more formally known as HD 209458 b, which was the first planet to be seen as it crossed in front of its star. It’s also the first planet to have its light directly detected. Its discovery showed that transit observations were possible, which opened up a whole new realm of exoplanet discovery.
The planet ahead of us is HD 189733 b. It’s about the size of Jupiter, and has been studied quite a bit ever since scientists discovered it transiting its star while they studied that star using X-ray frequencies. This is also one of the first planets to have its atmosphere ‘sniffed’ to determine its composition. I don’t remember the full list, but I do remember that the atmosphere contains methane. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s cows on that planet. Methane can be produced naturally. It doesn’t have to be a biological byproduct.
Now we come to HD 114762 b, which was discovered in 1989. This is the first discovered planet to be orbiting a sun-like star. However, because its mass is - as seems so popular - 11 times that of Jupiter, and because it only takes 84 days to complete an orbit, it was initially thought to be a brown dwarf. But it’s not. As a comparison, tiny little Mercury takes 88 days to complete an orbit around our sun.
I have to ask you to please be quiet as I approach this one. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t even bother with this one. Too dangerous, if you ask me; you never quite know what to expect from HD 80606 b. It’s orbit is so eccentric-- Oh! Hang on! ... Whew! That was close. I think we’ll be safe now, at least for a few minutes. Besides its highly eccentric orbit, HD 80606 b also displays plenty of storms and atmospheric heating, and you can plainly see how fast it rotates.
Okay, that’s our tour for today. I’ll take you back to base so you can get some supper. I know I’m ready for it. No, I’m sorry, I don’t know who will be your next driver and tour guide. No, I don’t know where you’ll be taken, either. From the looks of it, you still have quite a number of planets to visit. We are all qualified drivers and tour guides, ma’am, otherwise, we wouldn’t have the job.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science...
www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-pla...
